“You got to fire that nigger tonight. I always told you they were dogs. If you don’t whip ‘em, they don’t respect you. God, I hate the whole black mess of ‘em. I know a fellow from Washington that’s right on the inside, and he claims Congress is going to bring back slavery. That would be the smartest thing they ever done. Wouldn’t I like to see one of these nigger college professors sent back to making cotton, and laid over a barrel and getting fifty lashes if he bellyached!”

“Nuts, you got mixed up,” said his wife genially. “What the fellow said was, the big guns in Congress are thinking about moving all the darkies to Africa. That would be a dandy idea.”

Curtiss was sufficiently plastered now to scream at his wife, “So I’m a liar, am I, you little Polack bitch!”

Neil heaved up his great shoulders, preparing to remark, “Havock, I’d like to have you shut up and go home,” but Nancy was rather pleased by such ardent attention, and she crooned, “Why, dearie, I don’t think that’s a nice way to talk.” She beamed on Vestal with, “Yeh, why don’t you can the zig?” (In English, this meant discharge the Negro.) “I know where I can get you a hired girl—my cousin, Shirley Pzort. She’s been working at Wargate’s and they fired her for just necking the least little bit with a foreman.”

That wounded Curtiss’s ever-present pride of gentility, and he observed, “Bad enough for you to have a manure-shoveler for a father and a chippy like Shirley for a cousin, without having her work as a hash-hustler right next door to us—for the son of a tooth-jerker!”

Before Neil could say anything, Vestal had them all out in the kitchen, washing the dishes, and neighborhood amity was preserved, even at the cost of a platter which Curtiss broke.

It must have been by voodoo and clairvoyance that Belfreda came flirting in at the second when Neil had wiped the last saucepan. “Howdy!” she chirruped, and it seemed to Neil that she winked at Curtiss. “My granddad was sick. Sorry. Well, good night, folks!”

If there was gin on her breath, and there probably was, none of them was in a condition to know it. She frisked off to bed without so much as breaking out the ice-cubes which would obviously be needed, if Curtiss was to be kept in the state of imbecility demanded by the Havock idea of hospitality—in their house or anybody else’s. Neil stared after her, but Vestal warned him with, “Hush! After all, she does save me a little work.”

“But she expected us to fire her! She was waiting for it! She had a good come-back all ready. Shame to rob her of the chance. The way she gloated—I’ve got to crack down on her.”

“You leave her alone till after the Christmas cheer, if any, and then I really will hustle and find somebody else,” promised Vestal.